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DAMIEN LANE

Helen McEntee walkabout didn’t make Dublin safe – capital still terrorised by thugs unless radical action happens soon

Despite all the talk, all the promises, Dublin remains a city on edge and full of menace

• Published: 7:00, 5 Apr 2024

• Published: Invalid Date,

YOU may remember the photo of Justice Minister Helen McEntee striding purposefully along Store Street in Dublin’s north inner city last summer.

The photo op — one which should haunt her for the rest of her days in politics — was dreamt up to assuage the growing sense that Dublin had become a lawless and violent kip.

A couple of days before Helen’s “reassuring walkabout”, American tourist Stephen Termini was violently attacked on the same Store street.

The attack was, of course, just one of hundreds that have been carried out across the capital year-in, year-out since the pandemic hit in 2020.

But the attack on Mr Termini made the front pages, both here and in America. Ireland’s reputation as the land of diddly-eye, pints, rosy cheeks and leprechauns, especially for rich Americans was at stake.

Can’t have the Yanks stop coming to Ireland — that’d be a disaster for our tourist industry. The last figures available showed Americans spent €1.77BILLION in Ireland in 2019.

The intervening pandemic saw that drop, absolutely, but American tourism into Ireland since Covid fecked off has mushroomed, and while no firm statistics exist yet, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s considerably more than the 2019 spend.

What to do to protect the state’s coffers in the face of bad publicity? Walk down the same street the US tourist was battered to show the world that all is not what it seems and that everything is rosy in the garden, begorrah.

At the end of her awkward amble — I’ve never seen anyone wear high heels in the north inner city — Helen proclaimed in the blandest of terms: “We welcome all tourists and we want people to know that, for the most part, Ireland as a country, and our cities, are safe.”

My arse. Surely, even she didn’t believe what she had just said. If she did, she definitely doesn’t live in the real world.

The photo op done, Helen went back to her desk job, the garda chiefs retreated to their plush HQs and the feral thugs who rule the streets of the capital re-emerged from their temporary hiding places to continue their thuggery, their drug dealing, their vandalism and their wanton attacks.

“Plus ca change”, those of us who walk the city’s streets every day mumbled to ourselves. Then, on November 23, the inevitable happened. The Dublin riots, which saw buses and trams torched, shops looted, garda cars set on fire and gardai attacked, didn’t just come out of the blue.

The knife attack on children that preceded the mayhem may have been the spark that lit the fuse, but the fuse would have been lit anyhow.

The city had been a tinderbox of violence and dysfunction (housing, or lack of it, the chief culprit) for many years. It was always going to overflow into a great conflagration.

The city is in desperate need of true leadership because the government has FAILED and the city is dying.

Last June, around the time Helen walked in her high heels, the Citizens Assembly recommended Dublin should have a directly elected mayor, with real power over housing, transport, health care and the emergency services, among other important things.

Political mistrust

The government has promised a referendum for Dubliners to make this a reality this June, at the same time as the local and European elections.  

The lads and lassies in the Dail like to make promises. Few are delivered upon, hence the widespread mistrust of politicians.